My earthly father, he wanted to protect me, sometimes this felt to me like control. Once sitting in the barn, the Hermitage of Peace I call the old structure from my childhood, where I had returned to live near him in a transition period, he sat, I sat. I said, "Dad, I don't want to let fear guide me." And, yes, I was afraid and feeling so lost, so lost and hopeless that one day I went into the pasture across the pond, sat in a chair, weeping and weeping, wondering if there were no dreams left for me, that this was all left, that I was simply going to exist until death. When speaking of not wanting fear to guide me, he said, "Son, it's worked okay for me." Yes, and No. It had kept him safe, but from the joy I once saw in his smile and on his face, and everyone around him suffered likewise, like a contagion running through the veins of the family.
Once, so angry at him trying to hold me back, I got off the phone, took the sole picture I had of him in my apartment, and hid it in the cupboard. I had planned to go and visit from South Florida to Georgia for Christmas, and I refused to go. Now, eight years later, I feel him close at times, like he is completing unfinished work, though in body he is gone. When driving up I-95 from Florida, truck loaded, to Maine, having never even been farther than Virginia on the east coast, I sensed him with me, blessing me, rejoicing with me, on the pilgrimage. I alone, yet, not alone.
In Maine for over a year, after being single and solitary many years, I decided to date again. I opened that door with trepidation. I drove to meet someone, and, again, that presence, dad. I wondered, "Why is he here?" She did not appear. I got up, purchased some coffee and a cookie, returned home. Again, alone, not alone. I sensed he was saying, in that being-with on the way there, "You're going your way again, you're accepting a new beginning, you're being courageous, not letting fear keep you away; you opened the door to be loved and love again, and son, what I could not say in life, "Go for it! I'm with you, and I'm so proud of you." Love is like that, you know. Please remember this, please never forget.
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